Senethro
Overlord
Alright, experiments conducted. Heres how it breaks down.
The Agrarian Svart goes Calendar --> Chants --> Education --> Mystic (Adopt God King and Apprenticeship) --> Explore (Build Pagan temple and set Priest) --> Hunting --> FoL --> Cartography + Lightbulb GP for Hidden Paths, adopt GoN and City States.
Non-Agrarian Svart is the same except without Calendar.
The result: They hit turn 150 with almost exactly the same gold income and tech researched. ~+57 beakers per turn. Didn't matter what the tech route was, came out to the same every time. The Agrarian game with a Dye resource managed to grab Crafting and Mining as extra techs before 150, suggesting the dye gave a lot of research early but the per turn tech income wasn't higher at 150. I think this is because core cities produce nearly all your gold, which would be cities 1 and 2, with city 3 contributing a little. Cities 4 and sometimes 5 weren't profitable yet.
Through using God-King the Non-Agrarian Svart managed to keep up with the Agrarian, at least in the 3 core cities. In 150 all cities had produced fairly similar buildings/military (Mostly hunting lodges, elder councils and a Temple of Leaves).
The big difference: Agrarian Svart would have 5 cities with pops like 8/9/9/6/1 while Non-Agrarian would have 4 with 6/7/6/2. I'm not sure how big a difference that really is as GoN is about to grow them all huge anyway, but whos going to turn down an extra city?
TLDR: Certainly go Agrarian if you have a good calendar resource (silk in a forest, incense on a plains, Dye on a river) and a river, especially with floodplains. Certainly go Agrarian if you have unforested river grasslands but can't find other 3 food tiles.
Don't go Agrarian if you don't have a Calendar resource and your fresh water comes from a lake. The +1 gold from river tiles is a big part of what makes early farms useful. Without a river you're better just to get Education faster. Honestly though, unless you have a good farm resource which can be irrigated, I'd recommend moving your Settler.
If you have Flood Plains or other high food tiles unlockable with farms then Non-Agrarian falls behind less.
On low difficulty go Agrarian so you can use the food to spam settlers. On Immortal and Deity go Non-Agrarian as the expensive techs make delaying education/diverting from FoL beeline a bad idea.
Even TLDRer: Non-Agrarian is always reliable, Agrarian is better in a low food river start or where a high yield Calendar tile is available in capital.
The Agrarian Svart goes Calendar --> Chants --> Education --> Mystic (Adopt God King and Apprenticeship) --> Explore (Build Pagan temple and set Priest) --> Hunting --> FoL --> Cartography + Lightbulb GP for Hidden Paths, adopt GoN and City States.
Non-Agrarian Svart is the same except without Calendar.
The result: They hit turn 150 with almost exactly the same gold income and tech researched. ~+57 beakers per turn. Didn't matter what the tech route was, came out to the same every time. The Agrarian game with a Dye resource managed to grab Crafting and Mining as extra techs before 150, suggesting the dye gave a lot of research early but the per turn tech income wasn't higher at 150. I think this is because core cities produce nearly all your gold, which would be cities 1 and 2, with city 3 contributing a little. Cities 4 and sometimes 5 weren't profitable yet.
Through using God-King the Non-Agrarian Svart managed to keep up with the Agrarian, at least in the 3 core cities. In 150 all cities had produced fairly similar buildings/military (Mostly hunting lodges, elder councils and a Temple of Leaves).
The big difference: Agrarian Svart would have 5 cities with pops like 8/9/9/6/1 while Non-Agrarian would have 4 with 6/7/6/2. I'm not sure how big a difference that really is as GoN is about to grow them all huge anyway, but whos going to turn down an extra city?
TLDR: Certainly go Agrarian if you have a good calendar resource (silk in a forest, incense on a plains, Dye on a river) and a river, especially with floodplains. Certainly go Agrarian if you have unforested river grasslands but can't find other 3 food tiles.
Don't go Agrarian if you don't have a Calendar resource and your fresh water comes from a lake. The +1 gold from river tiles is a big part of what makes early farms useful. Without a river you're better just to get Education faster. Honestly though, unless you have a good farm resource which can be irrigated, I'd recommend moving your Settler.
If you have Flood Plains or other high food tiles unlockable with farms then Non-Agrarian falls behind less.
On low difficulty go Agrarian so you can use the food to spam settlers. On Immortal and Deity go Non-Agrarian as the expensive techs make delaying education/diverting from FoL beeline a bad idea.
Even TLDRer: Non-Agrarian is always reliable, Agrarian is better in a low food river start or where a high yield Calendar tile is available in capital.
